


Bricked-up Garden

by resurrectedRevisionist (wilySubversionist)



Series: Rabbit Will Run [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: allusions to rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:36:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilySubversionist/pseuds/resurrectedRevisionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They don’t see any of his stiffness, the fear for them winding through his muscles when they reach for his uniform with plucking fingers and loosened tongues. They beg for clean food, for medicine. They beg for the sky. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bricked-up Garden

Mordin’s overrun, and you're half way to a heart attack, a half dozen targets —not targets, _civilians_ — rushing him with runny eyes and running mouths, and you can’t cover him and it feels like bleeding out and it’s his own damn fault.

There’s something in his posture there when he’s flanked on all sides by bobbing long-haired heads, the relaxed, level cant to his shoulders that reads like he’s got infinitely open arms and will gather them all into his limitless, accepting and morgue-chill bosom. They don’t see any of his stiffness, the fear for them winding through his muscles when they reach for his uniform with plucking fingers and loosened tongues. They beg for clean food, for medicine. They beg for the sky. 

Dozens of women — _not_ targets— flocking all around him, pulling at his clothes and though he’s frozen and backsliding, looking aloof and a little frightened, Mordin’s also pushing back against their sobbing assault with something that looks like a battery-operated tongue depressor in one hand and the other reaching for their open mouths. He’s checking all their ears, noses and throats, all the obvious openings for disease, like a good clinic doc would. Like it will matter if they have swollen tonsils or inflamed nasal membranes when their minds are half gone and you'd both heard the beginning; you both figured out the end and don’t want to dig into the middle.

The dirty, pressing women shout and coo in busted remnants of language, their minds acid-rain eroded; their bodies, you don’t even try to contemplate. The first data pad told you, your stomach lead-heavy and flipping, what kind of story this is. It’s nothing new —half the Alliance recruits had heard it's twin and some still felt it firsthand— too mundane to be really affecting. But with Mordin standing there examining all these empty forms, these bodies used and discarded with minds cracked open and ground-stomped, it seems particularly horrible. It’s nothing but the most mundane tragedy, you swear to yourself, but watching his white uniform in disappear in patches between the earthy brown bareness of their forms, it seems a pretty perverse form of medical drama. You want to be sick, but your heavy-settled stomach overrides the impulse. Better any way, since between the patch of patients and the kill-zone, you don't have an eye left for spilled breakfast.

Shouting down to you from over the next ridge and past the time-stripped tents patched with foreign palms, Jacob is yelling and glaring and muttering about “seeing it through”, as he angrily eyes the lush campsite background you’re worried you’ll sink into. He’s lumping you in with Mordin in each sweep of the eyes, and you bristle under his anger — it’s Dr. Do-Good who’s dragging ass, not you, and you are _nothing_ like his patients. But beneath his impatience, you can easily see under the go-go- _go_ martial drive to his growing ill-ease —belay that— fear. You read the nav display off your right arm, the enemy-seeking compass pointing up and over the horizon of his frown. He sees only stalling.

He’s right, you think, because you know this story better than he ever could. You remember the lush stink of Virmire, what it means to closet yourself in with no code, forgetting everything but your own biological imperative. It gets darker in that place than you think he can grasp. standing sun-dappled on the ridge, urging you forward. Jacob’s all restless movement, scoping past the leafy berm, soldier’s eyes pointed back at you with a naked need. He’s ready to finish this story, and isn’t even present enough to understand it’s not _his_ anymore.

Shouting at you, he’s drawing out each syllable more desperately, gesturing with his gun muzzle and begging for assurance; behind you, Mordin’s clinical coo soothes and drowns the unending, half-verbal plea for rescue. There’s a mission, then there’s a team, and then there’s a sense of what isn’t right. Mordin, for all his tonsil-checking, is still on the right side, and it lets you relax for the slightest moment, even as you know you'll drag him away.

Jacob shouts “Commander, he’s over here!” and his black and white bulk blends behind the foliage for an instant, uneasy camouflage. Aft, Mordin’s still caring, and barking in busted monotone to wait, to reconsider. You know how this ends, but you start at a canter-clip to follow Jacob to the inevitable end, wondering if you'll get a say, wonder who’s gets to be the protagonist here.


End file.
